How to Market a Product When its Boring

How to Market a Product When its Boring

How do companies market a product even though it’s not sexy? Good question

How to market a product when its boring can be quite a challenge. Lets face it not all companies produce exciting things like Apple, Microsoft or Mercedes. If we are honest they are just plain boring. But that does not mean that their marketing campaign has to be dull

So how do these companies create such great campaigns? Well according to research by the University of Pennsylvania things go viral if they fit into at least one of four categories.

Awe – Inspiring

Emotional

Positive

Surprising

Experiencing one or more of these emotions will encourage people to naturally want to share it with others even if the product is the most boring thing on the planet.

Look at these boring companies and feel one or more of the 4 emotions. Think how each one made you feel and remember to try using these strategies when you are marketing your product or service.

1/ Tipp-Ex

Correction fluid defiantly one of the world’s most boring products. Tipp-Ex wanted to promote their new whiteout tape, they knew they had to do something different. Timed to launched the campaign just at the beginning of school. Watch and see which emotions do you feel.

How To Market A Product When Its Boring – Jon Watwood

When I watched it I felt three of the four awe – inspiring, positive and surprising

After the campaign began they recieved

Over 46 million views

1+ million social media shares

Featured in 217 Countries

The average viewer spent 5 minutes on an ad

Sales increase over 30% which led to follow-up campaign

2/ Cardstone

Greeting cards I am sure you would agree not the most exciting of products. “Cardstone” teamed up with an ad agency “Mullen” to create a fake job description for a “Director of Operations” – aka “Mom.” This was very clever and evoked all four emotions. This ad still moves me even though I ve watched it several times.

How To Market A Product When Its Boring – Jon Watwood

This ad made people realize how much mothers do for their children. Hitting all four categories of awe-inspiring, emotional,

positive, and surprising. The campaign was quick to spread around social media and news channels. Cardstone saw:

2.7 million impressions

Over 21 million views

1.6 million social shares

3/ Ensurance

A very boring product car insurance. This campaign was simple, featured something people would want to win and was interactive. It was both positive and surprising.

SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL ESURANCE 1.5 MIL GIVEAWAY #ESURANCESAVE30

With this campaign Ensure saw

5.4 million uses of the hashtag #EsuranceSave30.

More than 200,000 entries within the first minute of the commercial airing.

1.4 million hashtag uses in the first hour and 4.5 million in the first 24 hours.

2.6 billion social impressions on Twitter.

332,000 views on YouTube.

261,000 new followers on the official Esurance Twitter account — an increase of nearly 3,000%.

A 12X spike in visits to the Esurance website in the first hours of the sweepstakes.

4/ Virgin American Airlines

Most people just ignore airline safety videos – they certainly don’t go vial that is until Virgin American Airlines hired famous director Jon M. Chu and a team of renowned choreographers, producers, and dance stars to remake their safety video. This is a really cool video i felt all the four emotions.

Virgin America Safety Video – How To Market A Product When Its Boring

After releasing this video Virgin saw

9 million views — without people even stepping on plane.

430,000 Facebook shares.

17,000 tweets in less than 2 week.

5/ Beldent

I saved the best to last. It doesn’t really feel like an advert more like an informational video so your mind just accepts it as true. Watch and see how it makes you feel.

Beldent Almost identical – How To Market A Product When Its Boring

This campaign was a huge success and Beldent saw:

7 MM YouTube views.

73% of people preferred gum chewers.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these insights into marketing now you can apply them to your marketing campaigns to produce better results.Online marketing is a huge subject I joined the Six Figure Mentors specially to learn how to market a product online.